The quarterback gets the fame, the fortune and a date with the prom queen. This is an all-American article of game-day faith, the reason so many boys grow up wanting to throw spirals into a fading September sun.

Sometimes it looks so easy, too. Mark Brunell can complete his first 22 passes, and no, he's never been mistaken for Johnny U.

But the quarterback position was the toughest in all of sports even before Trent Green absorbed his devastating knockout blow, even before Chris Simms kept playing football with a ruptured spleen and a body so battered it required a blood transfusion.

Too many passers endure too much pain. Too many men are destined to end up looking like Y.A. Tittle in the forever snapshot of the Giant brought to his knees in every literal and figurative way, separated from his helmet and his senses as blood ran a river from his skull.

Back in the day, goaltenders who played without hockey masks were the baddest men in sports. Now that distinction is owned by fully-equipped passers who make split-second choices while being attacked by 300-pound men who can cover 40 yards in 4.7 seconds.

"It's like standing in the middle of a seven-lane freeway, and you're on the white line outside the third lane," Joe Theismann said. "You're looking at the traffic coming at you, you have all these cars flying by you at different times and spaces and you're focusing on a bridge that's not too far way.

"I played 163 consecutive football games. And then I got hit by a truck on that freeway with the license plate number 56."

Lawrence Taylor was responsible for the most gruesome injury suffered by a quarterback, shattering Theismann's leg on Monday Night Football, the jagged bones exposed for the world to see. The quarterback was safer in the ESPN booth in New Orleans on Monday night, far removed from the moment the paramedics shifted him from an ambulance gurney to a hospital gurney — the moment Theismann first saw his lower leg dangling like a hypnotist's swinging watch.

"Could someone please pick up the rest of me?" Theismann asked.

As he was wheeled off the field, the Redskins quarterback had told the Giants he'd be back to haunt them again someday, a promise he couldn't keep. The immense responsibility of the position inspired him to make that pledge, just as it inspired a wounded Simms to try to lead the Bucs to a comeback victory against the Panthers.

Just as it inspired Ben Roethlisberger to get back on the field 15 minutes after an appendectomy, which followed his near-fatal motorcycle crash in June.

"Brett Favre has played with a splint on a broken right thumb," Theismann said. "Imagine Roger Clemens pitching with broken right thumb and never missing a start. ... The way I see it, the good quarterbacks are the ones who don't miss work."

Sometimes quarterbacks have to call in sick. Drew Bledsoe's ultimate reward for leading the Patriots to the Super Bowl was a life-threatening hit delivered by Mo Lewis and an opening for Tom Brady to become Tom Brady.

Punishment and pain aren't the only hazards of the job. NFL playbooks contain anywhere from 250 to 700 plays. More than ever, today's quarterbacks are charged with directing blocking assignments for their tackles and guards.

They're also held most responsible for winning and losing, and not just by columnists and fans. Donovan McNabb's thanks for taking the Eagles to the Super Bowl was Terrell Owens' claim he was a choker.

Now Eli Manning is caught in the crossfire between his coach, Tom Coughlin, and the tight end who leads the league in imitations of a horse's rump, Jeremy Shockey.

"As a quarterback," Theismann said, "you can never please everybody."

Of course, the injured quarterback can't please anybody. Simms' father, Phil, felt so disconnected from the Giants' Super Bowl victory against the Bills — he was out with a broken foot after leading his team to a 11-2 record — that he barely watched the game and didn't join his team in the postgame locker room.

"When you're hurt," Simms once told me, "guys walk by you like you're invisible. It's not meant to be cruel. It's just like that wildebeest thing you see on TV. One gets hurt and the rest just run over and keep on moving."

Simms' son has to live in the same quarterback world, where the band keeps playing after a concussion, a shattered leg, and a surgery to remove a man's spleen.